Many of the authors I know spend their launch days hopping from one online event to another. Me? I took my kayak to the lake just up the road from my parents’ house. I felt kind of weird about it, actually. Like maybe I was Doing Things Wrong. But I also looked at my calendar…
Read MoreAll articles filed in childhood memories
Things You Might Not Know About Me
1. I once played my flute on Circular Quay in Sydney, Australia. (See the opera house behind me?) 2. I was once locked in a coffin. (It was for a play called “You Didn’t Say It Was Haunted.” That play was where I learned that an introvert can actually scream in front of a lot…
Read MoreStrawberry Season
We picked strawberries twice this spring, at the orchard where I had my first non-babysitting job. The first time, my mom met us there and Michael decided to help her fill her flat. Here’s his story, which he shared with me on the way home: “I picked a strawberry, but it had a bad spot.…
Read MoreOf Walking Bean Fields And Mowing Lawns, and Teaching Kids A Work Ethic
There’s a repertoire of “farm kid” stories that country kids have to have: loading, unloading and stacking straw and hay bales is on the list (check), and some great animal stories that are not universally appropriate to share (check). For a lot of people, detassling corn is one of Those Stories. I never did that,…
Read MoreIn Which Julianna And I Find Something In Common
I was nine years old the year I discovered figure skating. That was the year Katarina Witt won the gold medal at the Sarejevo Olympics, and it was my first fandom. In retrospect, I think what I loved most about her was the fact that she served as a mirror for me, or rather a…
Read MoreSibling Love?
“I’m sure you know this already,” said Julianna’s teacher, sitting in our living room on Saturday morning, “but…Julianna is just so sweet.” Christian and I exchanged a glance and chuckled, because we hear it all the time. In fact, he’d heard it from the counselor at her school just a couple of days before. And…
Read MoreFour Kids, One Cousin and Two Farms in Seven Quick Takes
(The world’s all-time record for a long blog post title?) ___1___ I practiced flute for half an hour in my bedroom at my parents’ house yesterday. Now, if you’re much of a musician you probably know that not all rooms are equal. Acoustics make playing in some rooms a pleasure and in others a chore.…
Read MoreMay Fest
When I was a kid, my little parochial school–200 students, grades 1-8–had its major fundraiser the first Friday in May. The school cafeteria/gym became the venue for a pork chop meal, which I think everyone in the parish attended, whether they had a kid in the school or not. In the corner was a country…
Read MoreWhat I Learned About High School After Twenty Years
It was quite a weekend. On Saturday I found out two of my articles had won awards, the scales tipped at pre-pregnancy weight, and we went to my twenty-year high school reunion. I’ve been anticipating this event ever since Christian’s reunion last fall. And several years before that, actually. But as the time grew close,…
Read MoreMentor
She was young and pretty and sweet, and from the first day she stood up in front of my sixth grade class, I adored her. I was at the height of my awkward stage, my self-esteem slipping on the shifting sands of hormones and changing social requirements. I didn’t fit in with my peers, whose…
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Kathleen M. Basi 